Post navigation

So what are “didactics”, you ask? It’s the theory and practical application of teaching and learning. Like all members of our team, most people fold for recreational purposes, but we also believe that paper folding can have an important place in education, as well as research, health and other areas. Our group aims to promote this wider use of folding, as well as studying the documentation and history of the art.

The aim of this site is to draw together information from the different folding didactic groups around the world and to provide a place to share resources. Please use our forum if you wish to discuss anything (you need to register first).

Pages from a specific country will be in their language, but you can easily choose your own language from the translation option on the right. Please let us know if your group would like to be added to this site and happy folding!

The 7th International Meeting on Origami in Science, Mathematics and Education (7OSME) will take place at Oxford University, UK, between 5th and 7th September 2018. The meeting will be held prior to with the autumn Convention of the British Origami Society.

The OSME meeting is one of the most important gatherings of the origami community around the world. Previous meetings, held approximately every four years, have been highly successful; the community has grown exponentially, (over 300 participants attended in the 6OSME in Tokyo). The meeting proceedings have become the definitive guide for advanced origami research.

There are various strands to the meeting, including a stream dedicated to Origami in Education. This will feature presentations from both researchers and teachers on the work that they have done around the world.

At the heart of the conference is the presentation of and publication of research papers. The deadline for submission of papers is the 15th March 2018. However, in advance of this we are inviting authors to submit abstracts, (shorter summaries of papers). The call for abstract submission for papers went out on September 1st and the 7OSME website is now open to receive submissions.

Details of the submission process, via a conference management system known as Easychair, can be found on our website. Both abstracts and full papers should be submitted through Easychair. If you do not have an account with Easychair, use the link provided above to create an account.

Before 1st December 2017, only abstracts are required. These submissions will be reviewed by the technical committee and a decision will be made on the suitability of the proposal to be developed into a full paper for 7OSME. This decision will be made no later than 6th February 2018.

Abstracts are invited in a standard format comprising a 2-page of A4 / letter PDF format. Two templates are provided on the website, one in MS Word and the other in LaTeX. You may include figures and tables in your submission.

We aim to make the proceedings of 7OSME available at the meeting, which will then be published as a book entitled “Origami7”. As a result, the gap between notification of acceptance of abstracts and the deadline for full paper submission is quite close. We would encourage potential participants to start preparing the full paper now.

If you would like to know more about 7OSME and keep up to date with the conference as it develops we are inviting people to pre-register through our website: http://osme.info/7osme/

Mario Cigada is an italian physician, who often has to teach statistics and so has written a small booklet:
“An introduction to statistics with origami – ORIGANOVA”. You can download the book (free) from here.

It’s a fascinating document that will surely be of great use to anyone working in the field of statistics.

Mario was born in Milan, 1959 and took a degree in Medicine and Surgery in Milan in 1983 with specialisation in Ophthalmology in 1987. From 1985 he sent ten years of programming with the APL language at a software company called Italian APL. He attended the European School of Hypnotic Psychotherapy of AMISI between 1988 -1991 and has been a psychotherapist and opthalmist since 1992.

The Crafts Council Nederland organized the second Crafts Campus in Wilhelminaoord (Holland) during the 12th – 17th July 2017 for fashion and design students, professionals, folders and anyone who wants to develop their skills. In this short, intensive course received a lot of knowledge of Chinese traditional techniques and new applications like by the Miao and Dong people: paper making, folding, dyeing, embroidery. Marieke de Hoop, Ien Rappoldt, Xiaoxian Huang and Joan Sallas were the teachers.

Lots of crafts come together in the making of different stiles of the Chinese method of combined folding boxes, in south China made from leaves of the mulberry tree, with the exterior of indigo from Guizhou and Yunnan and the whole decorated with embroidered patterns that are also used on the clothing of the Miao people. The combined folding boxes from north China are folded mostly with the flower box unit and its variations. The first two days the participants started collecting materials in the environment and making with them own paper. The next days the participants learn how to fold a north and south Chinese method of combined boxes, as well as dye and embroider a lot of samples in the ways of the Miao and the Dong Chinese ethnic minorities.

In addition to the program, Marieke de Hoop offered a Orikadabra theater for all the participants, Ien Rappoldt gave a conference on Miao and Dong embroidery and Joan Sallas gave an introduction on european napkin renaissance and baroque folding technics. Five days in a wonderful place with enthusiastic participants and through interesting activities.

During the evenings the teachers analyzed, compared and described ca. 150 original old Chinese samples of combined folding boxes (针线 包, zhēn xiàn bāo) from the collections in the PaDoRe archive in Badalona (Catalonia) and from Ien’s Rapppoldt Archive in Vledder (Holland).

You can now register your interest in the BOS Tribute to David Lister book, which is nearing completion. We ask that you do not register unless you are firmly committed to buying a copy. We need to go to print within a month, so please share this as widely as possible – the more we sell, the cheaper they will be!